In a time of increased fracturing of the Portland media market, Street Roots organizers want to increase their publication schedule from biweekly to weekly. But the push has little to do with journalistic competition.

Instead, it's about helping the dozens of men and women who at any given point in the year are using the newspaper as a source of spare cash and sense of community.

"Everything we do is for those guys," said Israel Bayer, the paper's executive director. "They're the ones who asked us to go weekly. They're the ones who'll benefit if we can."

Bayer, a teddy bear of a man frequently seen in cargo shorts and a battered St. Louis Cardinals cap, is the person most responsible for raising the money to go weekly – and for Street Roots' evolution from a scrappy newsletter into a major player in Portland's civic conversation about poverty.

His interest in saving the world stemmed from being arrested – inadvertently, he says – at the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. His interest in journalism started when he worked at a 7-Eleven in Denver.

A vendor's story

Nick Gefroh found a community at the Street Roots offices, and among his Street Roots customers. Read his story.

"When there were no customers, I'd read magazines from the store shelf," he said. "I started with the really dumb ones, but by the middle of the night it was, 'What's the New Yorker?'"

Bayer began at Street Roots as a volunteer in 2000, rose to executive director in 2003, and 11 years later is the guy elected officials call when they want someone to co-author an opinion piece on housing or test how a potential policy change will play among advocates for the poor and homeless.

Under Bayer's leadership, Street Roots began producing the Rose City Resource guide, a pocket-sized biannual listing of services for homeless men and women. (Portland police hand out the small yellow books like candy to people they find sleeping in downtown doorways, beneath Willamette River bridges and in camps along the Springwater Corridor.) Bayer also worked with Multnomah County to create a formula to count homeless deaths and produce an annual report of the findings. (In 2012, the county averaged more than one homeless death a week.)

"When police killed that guy at the zoo a few years ago, somebody from City Hall called and said, 'I'm not telling you what to say, but the press is going to call you, and I'd ask that you choose your words wisely,'" he said. "That was a strange, 'Oh wow,' moment."

Bryan Pollard and Michael Parker, Street Roots' founders, were activists first and journalists second. The idea for Dignity Village, the homeless camp that began as a form of protest but eventually won city approval and a permanent home in far North Portland, emerged out of a Street Roots board meeting. Pollard was a public face of the camp.

"Dignity Village would not exist without Street Roots," Pollard said. "We banged that drum as hard as possible."

Today, the paper's role is different. As homeless advocates in the Right 2 Dream Too camp try to recreate the energy and end result of Dignity Village, Street Roots reporters cover it with almost the same detachment as reporters from larger, mainstream publications. A few years ago, Street Roots even joined the Portland Business Alliance, the city's largest chamber of commerce and its loudest voice for tougher loitering laws. The relationship didn't last, but it was an effort to work with existing power structure rather than lob political grenades from the outside.

"We try to think of poverty as a bus. Whoever is touching it is on the bus: cops, business owners, tourists, homeless people," Bayer said. "We can't just bang our heads against the wall to bring down capitalism, because the capitalists buy the paper. They vote. They're going to be involved in finding solutions."

Homeless in Oregon

This fall, The Oregonian will take a broad look at the causes, solutions and severity of homelessness in Portland and its suburbs. We need your help. Do you have questions about homelessness and poverty? Email us or call (503) 412-7053.

Managing editor Joanne Zuhl came to Street Roots as a volunteer in 2002 after a career in mainstream media in Wisconsin and became a paid employee in 2003, the same year Bayer went from volunteer to paid director. Today, Zuhl runs a team that wins Society of Professional Journalists awards and gives serious, sometimes ground-breaking coverage to many aspects of poverty and street life, not just the core issue of homelessness.

That, too, is about the vendors: Great journalism can make elected officials change policies and everyday Portlanders rethink homelessness. It can also make buying Street Roots feel like a purchase rather than a $1 donation.

"We don't want them selling widgets," Zuhl said.

Despite changes in tone and appearance, the underlying model of Street Roots is the same as it was back when Pollard was pushing Dignity Village: Vendors buy papers for 25 cents a copy. They sell copies for $1 and keep the profits.

About 60 percent of Street Roots vendors sleep on the street. Most use their profits to supplement other income, say another job or disability payments. Cole Merkel, a former AmeriCorps volunteer and now the paper's vendor coordinator, makes a point of telling new vendors that Street Roots staff won't judge what salespeople do when they're not working or how they spend their earnings. The only consistent request Bayer makes is that vendors not smoke where they sell.

Vendors get more than money from the arrangement: Street Roots' offices, an Old Town suite next to CC Slaughters nightclub, are a gathering space. Vendors can earn more papers by doing chores around the office or picking up hand warmers in the winter and water bottles in the summer. They can use the restroom and check their email. Many list the paper as their mailing address.

"The way to sell is easy: You have to show up, you have to work hard, you have to be patient," said Willie Bradford, who usually sells outside the Multnomah County Library's downtown branch or the Portland State University farmer's market. "People will just walk past you. But if you say hello first, if you're smiling, if you're interested in them, they'll be interested in you."

Bradford has been selling the paper for almost three years.

"I started because I was looking for something to do during the day, some way to make a little money. I was also looking for something to help me keep my sanity, you know?" he said. "Everybody needs a routine."

Vendors estimate that 70 percent of sales come in the first week after an issue is published. Five or six years ago, they began asking Bayer and Zuhl to go weekly.

"Some people don't even bother going out that second week," said Paul Gefroh, a Street Roots donor whose son, Nick, found a community at the paper. "There's no point."

Adding 26 issues a year will add $100,000 to Street Roots' annual $400,000 budget, Bayer estimates. The bulk of that will go to printing costs, hiring a second full-time journalist and paying more on freelance writers.

Most of the paper's revenue comes from donations from foundations, businesses and individuals. So Bayer has spent much of the past year meeting with current and potential new donors to explain the reasons for publishing more often – and sell them on donating more to help cover the difference.

Donors usually come in one of two varieties: "There are old-school liberals, who made money but are left of center and want to give back," he said. "Then there are conservative bootstrap groups that say, 'We hate your politics, but we love the underlying model.'"

The sales pitch is proving easy enough that at a recent vendor meeting, a biweekly gathering at which Street Roots staff explain the new issue, Bayer announced that he was hoping to start as soon as December.

New papers arrive every other Friday. Vendors, many of them homeless, unload the new edition.Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

The news generated nods all around the crowded room.

"Customers tell me they want to buy it more," said vendor Sherri Banning. "And that's not just people who feel good about giving me a dollar every now and then. They read the paper. They want more of it."

Banning, a small woman with an impressive mane of curly blonde hair, used to be homeless but now lives indoors and uses her Street Roots earnings to help pay the rent and support an adult son with special needs. She sells in front of the OnPoint Community Credit Union on Northeast Broadway.

"My favorite part is the interaction with customers," she said. "Sometimes when you're on the street, or even if you're not on the street but just don't look like you have a lot of money, people ignore you. They don't even make eye contact. But I get all these smiles when I sell. Lots of smiles."